The Carnivore Project

Falafel is Murder.

Poor little falafal guy.

Broccosaurus Rex

This is almost enough to make me eat broccoli. 

Vomit Sticker Pack

As the designer of these stickers, Kenjon Bajus, says, "Aside from the many social, political, environmental, health, etc... reasons not to eat McDeez, it just doesn’t taste good."

Stick it to the man for $5.

(Image used with the owner's permission. We're carnivores, not thieves.)

(Shameless cross-blog! More on Kenjon over at Pornokitsch)

Gluttony: Doctor Who Style

Being raised in Kansas City and not in 'New Europe', the Doctor Who phenomenon is pretty confusing to me. I've never seen a show. From observing the gift racks at 'Forbidden Planet', I've deduced that a Victorian dandy is menaced by air conditioners. With the help of Kylie Minogue, he escapes through time. Repeatedly.

Despite my ignorance, a copy of Seven Deadly Sins wound up on my bookcase, and, desperate for escape from a broken boiler (not so different?), I read it cover to cover last night...

Not for Hanukah

A few more gift ideas from the World's Finest News Source, including Tater Mitts, Toilet Monsters and...

Patterned Band-Aids, off-brand and otherwise, are nothing new. But how about patterned Band-Aids that look like meat? These kind of greasy-looking adhesive bandages, available via a variety of novelty online retailers, make getting hurt fun! Just watch out for people trying to lick your wounds for you. Or push your damaged limbs into a hot frying pan. Or chop you up with some tasty eggs and scallions. Wait, maybe these are a bad idea after all.

The Axis of Evil Cookbook

Don't let anyone distract you with talk about the Wii, iPhone or Kindle - this year's ultimate Christmas present? The Axis of Evil Cookbook!

"Ever wondered what an Axis of Evil leader eats after a day spent threatening neighboring countries with weapons of mass destruction? This unique cookbook tells you how to prepare these dishes in the safety of your own home."

Of course, if that's all a little highbrow (not to mention, inedible), there's always the Beef Log...

The iPhone

The iPhone. Sleek. Sexy. Groundbreaking. Blendable?

A little early for Christmas, but...

The expiration of a patent means that infrared cooking can now be made available to the masses.

By ELLIOTT MINOR (AP)

ALBANY, Ga. | For a quarter of a century, chefs at pricey steakhouses have been searing meat on burners that cook with infrared energy.

Now the high-temperature technology, first designed to help automakers dry paint faster, may be coming to a backyard barbecue near you.

With the expiration of a key patent, gas grill manufacturers, including market leader Char-Broil, have scrambled to bring infrared cooking to the masses with models in the $500 to $1,000 range. Previously, such grills cost as much as $5,000.

Moofia

In addition to surveying the Internet for the latest in meat-related mayhem, I occasionally peruse pretentious style magazines. See how the other half live, and all that.

Occasionally, this proves incredibly fruitful (or meatful) - check out these beauties...

Meat Toaster

From Stephan:

Fragile Things

One of the many blessings of a blog focused on meat is that it has now provided me an excuse to say something nice about Neil Gaiman's latest book, Fragile Things.

My devotion is Gaiman is unquestionable. He has undisputably conquered the world of comics. His novels waver between the terrific (Neverwhere) to the pretty good (Anansi Boys). He's even begun to take the plunge into Hollywood.

Fragile Things, however, I would hesitate to include amongst his successes.

A Pinch of Spices

One of the more esoteric, but beloved, books in my kitchen is Desmond Briggs' A Pinch of Spices. It's a slim, small paperback, published by the author in 1978 and immediately disappearing into obscurity shortly afterwards.

Nightshade from Gerard's 'History of Plants' (1633).
Incidentally, don't cook with Nightshade.

Missionary Stew

Although Missionary Stew isn't fiction to make you hungry (I hope), there are some undeniably culinary references throughout the book.

The 'Missionary Stew' of the title is explained quickly in the thriller's first chapter. Morgan Citron, a reporter, held prisoner by an insane African dictator, is forced to trade the links of his gold Rolex watch for whatever food available. The stew is a particularly unpleasant option, and one that haunts Morgan throughout the book. It isn't helped that, upon his return to 'civilisation', he is asked ad neauseum about the dictator's peculiar dining habits. Pun intended.

High Hunt

A brief diversion into the heady world of fiction.

David Eddings is best known for his bestselling fantasy series, called the Belgariad (and the sequel series, and then the other series he wrote that was pretty much the same thing, and then the 'stand-alone' fantasy novels that were the same thing, and then the ones that revisited the Belgariad from different viewpoints... You get the picture). It's pretty good - genre critics argue about it, but everyone pretty much agrees that it's an enjoyable piece of fantastic literature, and that it's probably made Mr. Eddings a deservedly wealthy man.

This is about his other book.

Starbucks' Gingerbread Latte

Don't do it. It was a fit of enthusiastic experimentation that I now whole-heartedly regret. Gingerbread is not meant to be a hot liquid - the result is not unlike sipping molten cheesecake.

Bacchus and Me

Before I start this review, you'll have to indulge me in a confession: I know nothing of wine. My day job (shockingly, this website doesn't yet pay the mortgage), often requires an indulgent meal or two, at which I'm required to order the wine. Generally, this results in blind panic and an adolescent fumbling with the wine list. (My French accent, incidentally, is also atrocious).

I have been told, however, that if you're interested in proper wine guidance, there are hundreds of books written that explain wine to the layman. I've clearly never read one of them.

This is probably why I enjoyed Jay McInerney's Bacchus and Me so much.

The Primal Cheeseburger

There is a difficulty with finding a book to read about food. A cookbook, although a useful reference, is a poor companion on a plane journey. On the other extreme lies the esoteric scientific tomes, worthwhile only for the rare tidbit of knowledge on the osmosis of sugar. (I have one particularly worthy read on the science behind short order cooking, that will certainly prove worthy of review if I can ever finish it...)

Elizabeth Rosin's The Primal Cheeseburger avoids both of these traps. It's a brief (250 pg) and enjoyable romp through the social history of all the ingredients behind a good burger (including the ketchup and the fizzy beverage).

If you'll excuse the obvious analogy, the book itself is like a good burger. Alternately cheesy and crunchy, it has more enough meat to keep you motivated through the calorie-free bits (the, er, lettuce).

Rosin organises the book around each of the discrete ingredients - and that wraps up with a gorgeous concluding chapter on the social history of the burger itself. If there is a flaw, is that her need to tell the story often leads to somewhat spurious generalisations. Apparently, we're culturally predisposed to red meat (I'm good with that) and the Coke is the great-great-great-grandchild of the Egyptian beer (well, ok). Although her research into the individual facts is meticulous, often they are strung together into a slightly dramatic conclusion.

Still, this is forgivable because the result is all the more entertaining for it. There's no pretense at hard science here, just good companionship, well-composed and easy to digest.

Salsify

Whilst perusing the daily menu at St. John (we all have our hobbies...), I was forced to stop my obsessive study of offal to puzzle over the word 'salsify'. I had no idea what this meant – and, being St John, deciphering it from context would be impossible. Was it nose or tail? Fish or fowl? Or even a strange cooking tactic? 'Pass me the nachos so I can salsify them'.

I was understandably disappointed when I discovered it was a vegetable. Fortunately, the let-down was tempered when I realized it was a really, really weird one. Apparently Salsify (tragopogon porrifolius) is also known as 'oyster plant' because of the edible root's faint, oyster-like flavor. Despite this stunningly dubious virtue, it's not particularly popular – despite the ideal climate, it's not grown commercially anywhere in North America due to the lack of demand.

Plants that taste like meat are a staple of the vegetarian delusion. ‘Why do I need to eat turkey, when I can reprocess bean curd to taste similarly?’ I’ve always been bemused by the irony of die-hard herbivores that stock their fridge with ‘vegetarian bacon’. And why is it that vegetarian ‘burgers’ are always burger-shaped? Doesn’t that seem a trapping of the carnivore conspiracy? And if so, well done to the Beef Illuminati.

I am not a mollusc.

But I digress, if anything, salsify is a boon for the grazers among us, as now they can eat an inanimate form of life (a root) that tastes like an inanimate form of life (an oyster). The opportunities are boundless. Perhaps enough salsify even acts as a meat-free aphrodisiac.

Salsify does have a few virtues of its own. One suggested recipe was based on cubing the salsify root then mashing it and forming the mashed salsify into patties [again, the penetration of carnivore culture] that are then fried. The end result is disturbingly nutritious - a 2/3-cup of salsify, which is approximately 90 grams, contains only 60 calories. And, presumably, doesn’t taste like dirt.

(More salsify recipes here)